Blogger Dr. Marcella Collins, Conference planner

Mosquito Bite Waiting To Happen. Part 1 of 3

Mosquito Bite Waiting To Happen – Part 1 of 3

Mosquito Bite Waiting To Happen. Some plebeians who fell prey to a 2009-2010 outbreak of dengue fever in Florida carried a particular viral strain that they did not accompany into the country from a recent trip abroad, according to a fresh genetic analysis conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To date, most cases of dengue fever on American contaminate have typically involved travelers who “import” the painful mosquito-borne disease after having been bitten elsewhere. But though the disease cannot move from person to person, mosquitoes are able to pick up dengue from infected patients and, in turn, duvet the disease among a local populace.

The CDC’s viral fingerprinting of Key West, FL, dengue patients therefore raises the specter that a disease more commonly found in parts of Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia might be gaining purchase among North American mosquito populations. “Florida has the mosquitoes that transmit dengue and the climate to sustain these mosquitoes all year around,” cautioned boning up lead author Jorge Munoz-Jordan. “So, there is potential for the dengue virus to be transmitted locally, and cause dengue outbreaks like the ones we saw in Key West in 2009 and 2010”.

And “Every year more countries tote another one of the dengue virus subtypes to their lists of locally transmitted viruses, and this could be the case with Florida,” said Munoz-Jordan, chief of CDC’s molecular diagnostics operation in the dengue branch of the division of vector-borne disease. He and his colleagues report their findings in the April issue of CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Dengue fever is the most widespread mosquito-borne viral infirmity in the world, now found in roughly 100 countries, the study authors noted. That said, until the 2009-2010 southern Florida outbreak, the United States had remained basically dengue-free for more than half a century.